


if these wings could fly

by Flowerparrish



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Angst, Obliviousness, POV Clint Barton, Pining, Protective Clint Barton, Wing Kink, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28088601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: He waits a few moments, pretty sure he’s going to have to start knocking again, when the door swings open.There’s Bucky, shirtless, disheveled, wings spread out behind him like some kind of tragic painting of an angel. Not that Clint knows much about art, but with the dark colors and dim lights he thinks this could totally have been something one of those old dudes dreamed up.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 44
Kudos: 175
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland - 2020 edition!





	if these wings could fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawksonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/gifts).



> For Arson/hawksonfire for the Winterhawk Wonderland Exchange!! I really hope you enjoy, bro <3 This was literally so much fun to write.

“Distract him.” Natasha’s voice over the comms is clipped, calculating.

“On it,” Steve responds, and Clint watches him head straight for the sorcerer, which—okay, probably not what Nat meant, but then, Clint supposes she could have been more specific.

It works, is the thing. Steve talks to the guy for a few minutes, trying to keep him calm and relatively still, and it seems to be working, until suddenly it is not working _at all._ Which culminates, as Clint watches in horror from a rooftop unable to help, in the sorcerer casting something at Steve.

Clint almost closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see, but he owes the team that he’ll watch even if his arrows and bullets are useless against this fucker who is warded against ranged attacks.

So he watches as Bucky materializes out of seemingly thin air and shoves Steve out of the way, taking the blast of magic himself.

Fuck.

Clint focuses on watching Nat tackle the sorcerer from behind, shoving his face against the cracked pavement beneath them and handcuffing his arms behind him so he can’t cast anything except, maybe, harmless sparks. Strange probably still could cast like this, but this guy is nowhere near Strange’s level, so this should hold him well enough until Strange can come back from wherever the fuck he is and take responsibility for this mess.

Clint focuses on this so that he does not need to focus on the way Bucky is hunched over his knees, face ashen and jaw clearly clenched. Clint can’t hear him from here, but he’s pretty sure based on Steve’s expression that Bucky’s making some kind of pained noise, and Clint is so fucking grateful he _can’t_ hear from up here.

So he watches, and he breathes, until it abruptly becomes unbearable to observe without helping, and he’s scrambling to pack up his gear and run twenty five flights of stairs so he can try to do _something,_ anything.

By the time he makes it out, Bucky has struggled out of his tac vest and undershirt, which is confusing at best. But then Clint gets closer and he sees that there’s something on his back? And it’s… growing?

He kind of wants to throw up, but he doesn’t. He just races over, catching one of Bucky’s arms as he reaches him. “Barnes,” he says, and wow, is that his voice? It sounds frantic, like Natasha-is-bleeding-and-not-responding frantic. He doesn’t know what else to demand, though. He’s not Steve or Nat, not a team leader, he can’t demand a report. He just… he wants to know what he can _do._ Clint hates little else the way he hates feeling helpless.

Bucky’s eyes lock on Clint’s, and they’re anguished, which is whole new levels of horrifying. Because, the thing is, he’s seen Bucky walk on a broken leg and not look particularly bothered, so what the _fuck_ is hurting him like this?

It takes Clint a moment to realize he’s scared, genuinely terrified, but right as he realizes it, two things happen at once.

Wings burst from Bucky’s back—wingspan long, twelve feet at least on each side, white and gray speckled feathers, objectively _beautiful—_ and Bucky blacks out.

“What the fuck,” Clint hisses, not a question so much as a general statement of shock, as he strains to support half of Bucky’s weight, Steve effortlessly supporting Bucky’s other side. Steve’s wide eyes meet Clint’s, and, well, at least he’s not the only one who has no idea what the fuck is happening… or what the fuck they should do.

* * *

Clint isn’t there for the tests that get run and the magical diagnostic session. It’s up to Wanda, mostly, which is fine because she’s got an incredible control of her powers by now, and no, he is not just saying that because she’s like a little sister to him. She’s badass as fuck and he trusts her.

Bucky must, too, because he lets her examine him—that, or Steve gives the okay to do it while he’s still passed out. Clint dismisses that, though; Steve wouldn’t do that to anyone, but especially not to Bucky, who still has so far to go in regaining authority over his mental and physical self.

So Bucky must’ve let Wanda figure out what she could, but it takes Clint almost two days to find out what that _is_. He only finds out at all because Tony takes pity on Clint—“I’m tired of watching you mope around the common floors, birdbrain,” he says, and Clint would be offended if it wasn’t kind of true—and tells him that some kind of magic gave Bucky the wings, and they don’t know how to undo it. Hopefully Strange can tell them when he’s back from wherever he is, but for now Bucky’s just… stuck like this.

Clint, for his part, not that his part really means much in this whole thing and he _knows_ that, but… Well, for his part, Clint is two things. One, jealous, because he totally wishes he had wings. But two, he’s something a more functional human might call heartbroken, or pitying, but he just calls an uncomfortable feeling somewhere between his stomach and his heart. Because Bucky’s only just started to feel comfortable in his body. (And Clint may know a little more about that than the others, but sue him, Barnes is hot and once he realized Bucky was looking at him _that_ way, well, he wasn’t going to just _ignore_ that kind of opportunity.) And now it's been modified against his will once again, and Clint completely understands why he'd be messed up about that. 

But... He also (if he allows himself to admit it, which he doesn’t, not really, except in the late-to-early hours of the night) misses Bucky.

Bucky’s been holed up in his rooms, and some point around day two he kicked even Steve out of them.

And Clint misses him. Not just the sex, although it is frankly amazing sex, but the downtime they spend hanging out together, eating pizza and watching a backlog of science fiction classics—they’re on Doctor Who, starting from the 60s and moving on, using JARVIS’ web-trawling skills to get the best versions of each of the old episodes they can find—or trash-talking one another as they play Halo on the giant TV in the communal lounge.

It’s kind of pathetic, but Nat’s glaring daggers at Clint every time he sighs by the fourth day, so he sucks it up, grabs some of Bucky’s favorite hipster beers that he pretends he doesn’t like just so he can make fun of him over them, and knocks on Bucky’s door.

It takes three straight minutes of knocking for him to get an answer. That’s okay. Clint’s… well, he’s not patient, not normally, but he’s determined, and that makes up for it in situations like this.

“Fuck off!” finally comes Bucky’s voice from behind the door, and Clint grins.

“I have beer,” he calls back. “Let me in, asshole.”

He waits a few moments, pretty sure he’s going to have to start knocking again, when the door swings open.

There’s Bucky, shirtless, disheveled, wings spread out behind him like some kind of tragic painting of an angel. Not that Clint knows much about art, but with the dark colors and dim lights he thinks this could totally have been something one of those old dudes dreamed up.

“What are you doing here?” Bucky demands.

Clint holds up the beer in silent explanation. When Bucky just continues to watch him, taking up the whole doorway, Clint quirks an eyebrow. “You gonna let me in?”

He can see that Bucky honestly contemplates telling him no, but then he glances down at the beer and longing flashes across his face. “Whatever,” he bites out, but he moves away from the door and back into his apartment.

Clint follows him in, kicking the door shut behind him and setting the six-pack on a side table. He takes in the messy state of Bucky’s apartment, curtains drawn so that light only filters in through the gaps as though that will make the mess any less terrible. (And when it’s Clint acknowledging that a mess is out of hand, well. That’s a problem.)

He can acknowledge that it’s not really Bucky’s fault. It’s clear, from dishes piled in the sink and trash piled by the door, that he hasn’t been taking care of day to day shit. Fair; he’s in some kind of tailspin that Clint isn’t gonna try to pin labels to, but that shit is the first shit to go when you’re not doing great. He gets that.

It’s also definitely not Bucky’s fault that the floor is littered with stray feathers. Some are tiny, and some are longer than Clint’s hand, and once again he’s hit with something in his gut that feels hot—jealousy? Lust? Some combination of the two?—about the whole Bucky-having-wings thing.

He doesn’t think either of those emotions are welcome, so he does his best to push them aside.

The only part of the mess he does think _might_ be Bucky’s fault, kind of, although he’s reserving judgment, is the… nest. There’s no other word for it. It’s a fucking nest.

The couches and chairs and living room tables have all been pushed to the edges of the room. In the middle of the open space that Bucky has created is a pile of blankets and pillows and comforters and bed sheets; it’s some cross between luxurious and ridiculous, and Clint wants to dive right in and snuggle down.

He refrains. Manfully. And without any longing glances.

“I can’t sleep in bed,” Bucky bites out.

Clint drags his eyes away from the nest. Okay, so he was staring a little. It looks really fucking cozy! He can’t help it!

The words process, though, and his stomach does a little unhappy flop. “You’re sleeping on the floor?”

“Slept worse places.”

Clint frowns. “That isn’t a good excuse and you know it.”

“Can’t fucking help it, can I? The bed keeps brushing against my wings in uncomfortable ways, and I don’t have enough control to tuck them in or whatever. They just…” he trails off, looking on the verge of frustrated tears. “They just move around and _do shit_ and smack into things and wake me up.”

Clint has witnessed many Bucky Barnes meltdowns since he moved into the Tower with them. It was inevitable, a mix of Clint’s bad luck and Bucky’s unpredictable triggers. But those are all blank-faced shutdowns that he has to be carefully coaxed free of; they were never anything like this.

Like _this,_ Bucky looks like he’s going to snap in some kind of crying, screaming, raging mess. He’s not a toddler throwing a tantrum, but it’s the same general concept—he’s sleep-deprived, traumatized, and hypersensitive: not a great mix when it comes to emotional regulation.

(Clint has maybe learned some things in therapy. Ugh, gross.)

So he squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and decides that he’s going to fix this if it kills him. (That’s an exaggeration; he’s not afraid of Bucky. Even at his most dangerous, Bucky would never hurt Clint or anyone else. Clint trusts him as much as he trusts Natasha, which is frankly terrifying. So.)

“Let’s watch some movies,” he suggests. “We can sit in the n—on the floor, and I promise not to hold it against you if you whack me with the wings.”

Bucky eyes him warily, but he relaxes by degrees. He scrubs a hand over his face, eyes wet with unshed tears, and nods. “Yeah. Please. Just… bring the beers over, will ya?”

“You got it.”

They end up watching The Great British Baking Show, because it’s soothing and it’s informative and it’s addictive as hell once you start watching.

At some point, Bucky’s head falls down on Clint’s shoulder. “You asleep?” Clint whispers.

“Nah,” Bucky half-whispers back. “Jus’ restin’ my eyes.”

Clint smiles. “Okay.”

While Bucky rests, he thinks. He may not keep up with Steve for strategy or Tony and Bruce for sheer mental capacity, but he’s gotten pretty good at mental flexibility: at improvising and coming up with unique solutions to problems. So by the time one of Bucky’s wings brushes the ground and he startles awake with a curse, Clint’s come up with… well, with _something._ It has to be better than nothing, right?

Hopefully.

When Bucky settles again, cursing cutting off into shaking breaths, Clint offers tentatively into the quiet (Bake Off long paused because they hadn’t touched the controller in hours), “I have an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“The problem is that the wings still feel foreign, right?” It’s a rhetorical question; Clint knows Bucky-speak well enough to have read that much between the lines by now. Bucky nods anyway, though, which is nice confirmation. “So, what if I touch them until they stop feeling strange and sensitive and start just feeling like another part of you?”

“I don’t want them.”

“I know.” Clint does. He gets it. He may be wildly jealous, but that’s him. He’s never been through half the shit Bucky has, and he hates that Bucky’s had his body modified without his consent _again._ “But right now you have them. And I don’t think pretending they’re not there is working.”

“I might literally punch you in the face.”

Clint nods. “Thought of that too,” he admits. “I could tie you down.” They’ve experimented with restraints before—in exclusively sexual contexts—and Bucky likes them well enough so long as he can get free if he really tries. Which he pretty much always can no matter what Clint does because: metal arm, enhanced strength, etc.

He risks a glance over at Bucky’s face. Bucky is frowning. “We don’t have to,” Clint make sure to emphasize. “I’m not doing anything without your say so. And you know I’ll stop as soon as you ask.”

Bucky’s frown eases a bit. “I know,” he promises in turn, meeting Clint’s gaze for a moment and flashing him a weak, but genuine, smile. “I just… I don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” Clint promises. “No rush. But the offer’s open, okay? And if it doesn’t work, we can come up with something else. Just…” He doesn’t want to say the next part, because it’s not how they do things. They’re friends and they fuck and Clint’s coming to realizations he absolutely doesn’t want, but… well, they don’t do emotional shit.

This might be a moment in which emotional shit is worth the effort, though, so Clint powers through his discomfort. “Don’t lock yourself away from everyone?” he pleads. “It doesn’t have to be me you let be there for you, but… you deserve to have people in your corner who can get you out of your head. Okay? You deserve good things.”

Bucky lets out a shaky breath. He’s still for a long time, not meeting Clint’s gaze, eyes fixed firmly on his knees instead. But after the longest few seconds of Clint’s life, he gives on short dip of his chin, an assent.

Clint laughs, the sound awkward. “Okay. Anyway. It’s late. I should let you try to sleep.”

He kind of hopes Bucky will ask him to stay. But Bucky just nods, says, “Yeah, I’ll see you around, Clint.”

* * *

Clint can’t fall asleep that night. He’s dozing more than anything, half-asleep and worked up worrying about Bucky. That means he bolts upright when his phone vibrates underneath his pillow, suddenly very awake.

It’s a text from Bucky, which makes his heart jump in nervous anticipation.

_Let’s do it._

Clint lets out a breath slowly through his teeth, taking a moment to feel all the things he’s going to repress the shit out of when they actually _do_ this—the lust, mainly, and the bone-deep excitement—and then he texts back, _Tomorrow?_

_Now?_ comes Bucky’s counter-reply moments later.

Clint’s stomach swoops. _On my way._

Clint remembers at the last second to pull on some sweatpants; they’re threadbare, but they’ll serve as another layer between him and Bucky and hopefully remind him that this _isn’t_ a sex thing. It’s a helping out the guy you’re kind of in love with but pretending you’re _not_ thing. Totally different.

So he makes his way through the Tower, choosing to take the stairs to give himself a few extra moments of time to _chill the fuck out,_ and arrives at Bucky’s door without having run into anyone. The door swings open moments after he knocks, Bucky’s eyes red-rimmed with dark circles under them. He looks impossibly worse than this afternoon.

“You sure about this?” Clint has to ask.

Bucky gives a jerky nod. “Yeah. I need—something. I don’t know. Anything. _Please.”_

Clint nods and tugs Bucky into a gentle kiss. “Okay,” he promises against Bucky’s lips. “Relax for me, okay?”

It’s a much more tender kiss than they usually share, but as he strokes gentle hands down Bucky’s sides and deepens the kiss by degrees, he feels Bucky begin to relax. When he eventually pulls back, Bucky’s eyes are dark and heavy-lidded, and Clint feels satisfied. “Okay, bedroom, c’mon.”

He brought the ropes with him, grabbing the first ones in the drawer. They’re the deep purple ones, because of _course_ they are.

The bed has been moved to the center of the room, but Clint can see how Bucky’s wingspan is still long enough to brush at the walls. It’s impressive, really, but now’s not the time for admiring that.

“Ready?”

At Bucky’s nod, Clint guides him down onto the bed so that he’s lying on his stomach. Next, Clint ties Bucky’s wrists together, both pulled up so they’re above his head. Bucky’s head rests on a pillow, tucked against one of his arms in a way that would look almost peaceful if Bucky wasn’t a line of pure tension right now.

“Good?” Clint asks, tugging at the ropes once to make sure the knots will hold and then checking that there’s space between the knot and Bucky’s skin so that his circulation won’t be cut off.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “Feels right.”

“Okay. Good. Tell me if anything goes wrong.” Clint sets a pair of shears in close reach; he knows Bucky can probably force his way free if he wants to, but Clint likes to make sure things are safe on his end as well.

Then he moves to straddle Bucky’s upper legs, realizing as he does that he’s still only got on some worn sweatpants, so not much separates his lower half from Bucky’s bare legs. Bucky is in even less, just loose boxers that cling to the swell of his ass, and Clint’s trying very hard not to think anything that will cause a pants situation on his end. He genuinely just wants to help Bucky out; he doesn’t want to overcomplicate it.

He strokes gentle circles across Bucky’s lower back, nails scratching lightly over skin in a way he knows is just this side of ticklish so he can watch the way Bucky’s wings flutter with the movement, getting used to how they move.

When Bucky’s mostly relaxed beneath him, Clint’s fingers drift up to the space in between the wings that’s right over Bucky’s spine, tracing gentle touches around the base of the wings where they connect to his skin. Bucky’s body tenses and his breath hitches, so Clint starts talking to him, telling him all the shit he’s missed while he’s been hiding away in his rooms. Nothing important, just the little dramas.

When Bucky’s relaxed again, Clint gives him warning and an out. “We don’t have to do this. And if we do, we can stop at any point.”

Bucky, voice is heavy with… well, something unreadable, but he says, “Keep going.” So Clint moves up, stroking gently over one wing at a time, fingers following the path of the feathers and smoothing over the ones that have gotten ruffled out of place over the last handful of days.

Bucky tenses again, but he doesn’t say anything. Clint leans over a bit so he can stroke over the feathers just a little further out of reach. They’re in such a disarray that Clint doesn’t try to fix them at first, just gently following the curvature along the base and following the natural direction of the feathers, eventually smoothing them back into place with careful touches.

They’re so _soft_ and the patterns are beautiful, and it would be soothing except for the voices Bucky is making, little whimpers as he shakes underneath Clint, hands clenched into fists at the top of the bed.

“You good?” Clint asks, and Bucky says _yes_ , says _keep going_ , says _please,_ and Clint’s helpless to deny him anything.

He straightens out the wings and doesn’t stop there, keep stroking gently over them until Bucky’s shaking to pieces under him, griding down against the bed with each brush of Clint’s fingers against them. Clint learns that he’s most sensitive where the wings connect to his back, but that if Clint touches the top ridges Bucky will tense up and moan, and slowly he drives Bucky to the edge until he’s crying out and coming untouched.

Clint keeps touching him until he gets his breath back and begs Clint to stop.

Clint climbs off of him, settling back on his knees next to Bucky on the bed, looking down at his flushed cheek pressed against the pillow and his eyes shut tight as he quivers as if from phantom touches. “Did it help?” Clint asks, worried now that he’s somehow made it _worse._

But Bucky nods, eyes still shut, and Clint moves to untie his hands and rubs circulation back into the one made of flesh and blood, nerve endings and blood vessels.

  
  


When his shaking stops, Clint eases Bucky up until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, wings curled a little around himself, and Clint wonders if that’s intentional. Does he have control over them now? That almost seems too much to hope for, but Clint’s never been good at not wishing for things.

He goes to the bathroom and gets a cloth to clean Bucky up, first wiping away the tear tracks on his cheeks and then sliding the boxers off and cleaning up the mess of cum on his stomach. He throws the boxers and cloth both in the hamper when he’s done. “Pants?” he offers, but Bucky just shakes his head and moves to lay down. He lays on his back, this time, wings underneath him, and Clint waits for him to get agitated, but he seems relaxed and spent.

Clint moves toward the door but stops when Bucky quietly calls his name, turning back. “Yeah?”

“Stay?” Bucky asks. And he looks so beautiful, gray and white wings spread out around him, hair a mess on top of his head from the days he’s spent tugging at it and unable to wash it in a shower, instead making do with rinses in a sink. His eyes are heavy and sleepy and his mouth is curved into a small smile, but there’s a vulnerability to this moment, a tension in the air that says he thinks Clint might say no.

_As if._

And Clint moves back to the bed. “Lemme lay down first,” he says. “You can lay on me. I don’t want to crush a wing if I move around in my sleep.”

Bucky grumbles at being forced to move, but he eventually does as Clint asks and relaxes on top of him, so content Clint’s surprised he’s not purring.

Clint reaches out and strokes gentle fingers along Bucky’s wings, smirking at the soft noise Bucky makes against his skin from where his face is tucked against Clint’s neck. “Later,” Bucky mumbles, so Clint subsides.

Later. He can be patient, if it means he gets to watch Bucky shake apart again, gets to take him apart piece by piece so that he can remember how they all fit together, old and new alike.


End file.
